sleight of hand and twist of fate
by irnan
Summary: I suppose we should just be grateful they're not planning to televise the investigations," Anakin grouses. "Hmm," Obi-Wan says, too busy playing with Leia to answer him. AU since TPM.
1. prologue

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** Totally, totally, totally AU, since before TPM. Mostly born out of me thinking about how sheltered canon!Padmé's been throughout her life, which made me think she and Anakin and therefore the entire galaxy would have been better off if she'd had a different profession, and I think there was even a challenge about this years ago? ANYWAY THE POINT IS THE AU PLOT BUNNIES ARE TAKING OVER MY BRAIN. Uncool, guys. _

_(The prologue is only really a prologue and not a part of the actual story by virtue of it being intended as a oneshot that then spawned something rather... longer.)_

**prologue: roses, when you ain't got none**

Padmé's apartment had never been particularly big, but right now it seemed smaller than ever. Anakin's pacing could do that to a place.

She just wished he'd take that cloak off - not that it didn't make him look gorgeous and melodramatic and dashingly romantic. But every time he made one of those quick, restless turns, she found herself afraid the edge of it was going to knock something over.

"This isn't going to work," he said.

Something twisted in her chest when he said that. Oh, she'd known it all along; right from the start it had been a ridiculous dream, the Queen's-aide-turned-doctor and the slave-turned-Jedi. From the moment Sabé had re-introduced them after the attempt on her life nearly four years ago, it had been a ridiculous dream.

But to hear him say so hurt her more than she could ever explain.

"I know," Padmé said dully. "I know, Anakin, but don't worry. I can make arrangements - go back home. They do have med centres in Theed, you know."

Anakin stopped pacing and blinked at her. "Back to Theed? Well, sure, if you want. It'd probably be easier for me to find work here on Coruscant, though."

She frowned at him. "Work? What are you talking about?"

"What are _you _talking about?"

They stared at each other in perplexed silence. Finally Anakin gave himself a shake and crossed the room to kneel in front of her chair, taking her hands in his.

"I'm talking about the fact that I'm going to leave - no, no, not a word. Let me finish. I'm going to leave the Jedi Order. And we're going to get married, finally. And then I'm going to sort out a job, and we're - stop shaking your head at me, love! - we're going to bring up our babies."

"We can't," Padmé said. "I won't let you - you're too important to waste on - on -"

"On the children I'm having with the woman I love?" Anakin demanded incredulously. "Hey!"

"On me, yes," Padmé said. "You're the Hero With No Fear - you're the hope of the entire Republic."

"The only person I want to be the hope of is you," Anakin said flatly.

She tried to squirm away, but his hands just closed more firmly around hers. It was pointless anyway, and she knew it: trying to talk Anakin Skywalker out of a course of action he'd already decided on was like trying to stop the tides from turning.

And anyway. If she were honest with herself... she wanted him to do it. She wanted him to abandon that damned Order, to leave the war behind, to be able to marry her without fear of the Council tearing them apart. She wanted him to be a father to their children.

Sabé would help them if they needed it. Hell, she'd practically flung Padmé at Anakin, thoroughly delighted with the mutual attraction she sensed between her two friends. Encouraged them every step of the way. She wouldn't balk at marriage and babies.

But there was still the war.

"Anakin, you're one of the best commanders, the most successful Generals the Republic has. And don't look at me like that; just because I vote Opposition doesn't mean I don't follow the Holonet."

Anakin smiled faintly. "Love, I know. I know how good I am at this, trust me. And that - that's part of the problem. You were the one who makes me talk about it, and - and get help whenever I'm home. You were there when my mother died - you know what I almost did..."

She did know. Padmé knew very well; never had she been so frightened as when she'd seen the look on his face in that tent.

Sabé had made him take her along on his search in case Shmi needed her help, but in the end, Anakin had been the one she'd saved.

Finally she managed to pry her hands out of his and cup his scarred, lovely face. Ah, his eyes were far too old to belong to a twenty-three year old boy. He should carefree and full of life, just leaving higher education, getting his first job.

If he were that boy, would she still love him so much?

Yes. Always.

Padmé sighed softly. "What if the Chancellor asks you to retain your post in the Army?"

Anakin's smile was like the sun coming up. "Then he can hobble down and ask me himself. As far as I'm concerned, once I leave the Order, I'm outta there."

"I still think they need you."

"You need me. Our babies need me. Force, Padmé, you're a doctor - an excellent doctor - at one of the busiest med centres on Coruscant. Being a single working mother is bad enough when you've just got one child. We're having twins. And what, you thought I'd just breeze into their lives every few months for a day, or a couple of hours, and then breeze out of it again? I couldn't do that. And you couldn't put up with it. Nor should you have to."

She twined a lock of blond hair around her fingers. "You don't have to make this decision now."

He barked a laugh. "It's not like we've got the money to float along and trust in the Gods of the bank balance to sort everything out eventually."

An eyebrow went up. "You think money is the problem here?"

"Well, it's certainly one of the things that's forcing us to take a more practical approach to this."

"Oh, when did you grow up so much and how did I miss it?"

"Telling a guy he's gonna be a father will do that to him. Wait, was I not grown up when we started this?"

"In a lot of ways, yes. In some others, not so much."

"Cradle-snatcher."

She grinned. "Oh, but it was worth it."

Anakin grinned back. "Good," he said. Paused a moment, eyes shining as he looked up at her, and there was nothing in the world that could make her feel as beautiful - as adored - as he could, with just a look and a smile. "Padmé Amidala Naberrie. Will you marry me?"

Padmé leaned forwards and drew his head up to kiss him, gentle brush of her lips over his. "Yes," she whispered, shivering as his breath ghosted over her face. "Yes, Anakin Skywalker, I will."


	2. sleight of hand and twist of fate

_this is a disclaimer._

**sleight of hand and twist of fate  
**

They're married in a small ceremony three days after Anakin's proposal. Sabé and her Security Chief Typho are their only witnesses. For the first time since his childhood, Anakin isn't wearing Jedi robes. Padmé's own blue dress isn't exactly cut to hide her pregnancy; rather ruefully, she thinks that _baggy_ just isn't going to do it anymore. She's going to have to go shopping for maternity clothes.

They don't have rings, but that hardly matters.

"You could have had a far nicer ceremony in Theed, you know," Sabé says, reprovingly, over dinner.

"With my family, you mean?" Padmé says. "I remain unconvinced I want them knowing about this at all."

"She gets moody," Anakin says seriously to Sabé. "It's the hormones."

"It's my _mother_," Padmé snaps. "As far as she's concerned, I'm old enough that this pregnancy oughta be my third. Possibly fourth."

Sabé grins. "I am blessed in that politics are a legitimate excuse for not having any. Apparently surgeries that save people's lives aren't."

"I think you two are being a little harsh," Anakin says. Glances from one to the other: they're both frowning at him. "Aren't you?"

"Well, you see, Nubian society is rather _enthusiastic_ about children," Sabé explains.

Anakin grins. "And we're having two! That'll keep her happy."

Padmé laughs in spite of herself.

*********

"They wouldn't have thought anything less of you if we'd put the wedding off," Padmé whispers in the dark. It's very early in the morning, and Anakin is wrapped around her, hands cupping her belly to better feel their children shift inside her.

Strange but true: she hadn't felt truly married until they had come back to her – their – apartment, until they had torn each other's clothes off and fallen into bed, until he'd kissed her breathless and held her hips as she shifted and sat up and straddled him with desperate urgency, until they were moving together in a slow steady rhythm, until his eyes were blown with ecstasy and her body was trembling around him, until she had fallen, trembling still and panting, against his chest and had felt his arms go around her.

He's silent for a while. Then, "I would have thought less of me."

"The Holonet is going to be overflowing with sympathy for you, letting yourself get trapped like this by some scheming pregnant nobody."

"You know, marriage does actually still mean something in some parts of the galaxy," Anakin says, and she knows he means to be angry but they're both so tired that it doesn't come across that way.

Her turn to be silent. "Tell me."

"It's protection," he says softly. "Against – being sold away from each other. And for the woman, too, from... well, you can guess. Not legally of course, it wasn't a guarantee at all, but in some places, away from the Hutts especially, it was custom. It still mattered."

_It was custom_, he says, and Padmé shivers, feeling the weight of a thousand thousand years of sentient misery in those words.

"Thank you," she says quietly.

Almost, she can feel his frown. "For what?"

"Telling me. Trusting me." She smiles a bit, and lays a hand over his, twines their fingers together, feels that flutter inside as one of their children moves, and knows he senses it through the Force and the palms of his hands, big and heavy and callused and warm against her skin. "Protecting me."

Anakin kisses her shoulder gently. "Go to sleep, my love. You need it."

*********

Rare are the occasions when the Jedi Council is stunned into silence. Anakin thinks he should probably be recording this for posterity.

"May we ask why you've come to this decision?" Master Mundi says, struggling to contain his surprise.

Anakin smiles briefly. "I've recently been married."

The part he didn't tell Padmé: it's protection against these people, too. They have no power to dissolve a marriage. Nor can they take a Force-sensitive child for training to the Temple without consent: the mother's alone if she is unmarried and if the father is not known or not legally entered into the Registries as the child's sire, consent of both parents if they are married or if the father is legally entered.

Anakin checked to make sure.

You could hear a pin drop in the Council chambers. He doesn't quite dare turn to look at Obi-Wan, but his former Master's Force sense is a mess of resignation and understanding and a distinct lack of surprise and a streak of something like pride.

Master Yoda sighs. "Knew, I did, that such an outcome, we might face."

"Surely something can be done," Master Tin says. "The boy is the Chosen One, after all."

"The boy has broken the Code," Master Windu says harshly. Is there condemnation there, or just relief that such a troublesome part of the Order has been so neatly removed?

Like operating out a tumour.

Never before has Anakin's self-control slid away so quickly in these chambers.

"The boy is standing in front of you," he says, voice hard with anger. "The boy is sick and tired of being talked over and treated like a lightsabre that needs careful maintenance!"

"As a Jedi, you are nothing more than a weapon of the Living Force," Windu says, and Anakin realises what he sees in him: triumph. The man is triumphant.

He thinks he's _beaten_ Anakin.

"If you truly believe that then you _are_ a fool," Anakin says. He might as well have slapped Windu in the face. "How can you hope to protect the people of this galaxy if you've got nothing but contempt for the way they live? If you shut yourselves away –"

"How dare you –"

"Permit him to speak you will," Yoda says firmly. "Hear this, we shall. His right it is, if to leave his intention still is."

"You're damn right it is," Anakin says sharply. "You wanna hear what I think, about your glorious Order? I think you're afraid, Masters. I think you're afraid of yourselves, of your emotions, of all the things out there in the galaxy you don't understand." He draws a breath. "I came here with Qui-Gon Jinn because I wanted power – the power to protect and to help the people who couldn't do that for themselves. I had this – this dream that Jedi were brave, and noble, and good, and that they _helped_ you, no matter what. That their only duty was to go out there into the galaxy and save the people who needed it." Savage grin. "I found a bunch of self-righteous navel-gazing _politicians_."

The contempt in his voice when he speaks the last word is indescribable.

Another breath. "Don't worry about me, Masters. I'm not about to go the way of Count Dooku. But I'm done being the poster boy for a set of outdated beliefs and a way of life I won't ever think is right. _Ever_."

He doesn't bother to bow before he leaves.

*********

The nightmares come back that night: Padmé finds him in the kitchen the next morning, sitting on the floor with a cold cup of something between his hands.

"There are drugs and things, you know," she says for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time, Anakin shakes his head no, mouth set, eyes haunted. He'll see the doctors if she pushes him, and sometimes even when she doesn't, but he won't take meds.

In anyone else, it would be a pride thing, but she senses it's different with Anakin. There's a genuine fear there, and she suspects she knows what it is: loss of control. Putting himself so completely in the hands of another being that not even his mind would be his own anymore.

She can respect that fear. He's had enough of his dignity stripped away from him over the years.

*********

The galaxy finds out that Anakin Skywalker has left the Jedi Order via a rather awkward press conference given by the Temple's official PR speaker. Padmé watches the whole thing on the Holonet in the doctor's lounge at the medcentre, feeling delightfully wicked for getting so much enjoyment out of the poor man's misery.

"Um. Well. No, General Kenobi will be leading the attack on his own. Anakin Skywalker is no longer a member of this Order."

The uproar is instantaneous.

"Well, he broke the Code. No, no, there were no crimes involved..."

Padmé snickers into her cup of caf.

"You know, I heard a rumour once that you were friends with him," Liran says, coming up beside her. He's wearing a calculating look and a faintly teasing grin.

"Oh, really?"

"Performed the surgery on his arm. Doesn't he drop by here to check on the new synthskin treatments every now and then? And of course there's Tennar. Saw Skywalker having caf with him just the other day. Excellent shrink."

"I think he prefers psychologist."

"You would know. He married your university roommate."

"He did," Padmé agrees, keeping her face expressionless. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to know if the Boss is in today?"

Liran sighs, looking woeful and put-upon. "And all I wanted from you was an introduction to the Hero With No Fear."

"The simple fact of the matter is, Anakin Skywalker got married," the Temple speaker snaps at last in response to some obnoxious question or other. Plainly, even Jedi PR reps run out of patience _sometimes_.

Liran's jaw is hanging open.

"It isn't the introduction I would object to," Padmé says, putting on her most dignified look. "It's the opportunity you'd think it presented."

She waits until she's out of the room and halfway down the corridor before she starts to smirk, and then finds, somewhat to her own surprise, that she barely stops for the rest of the day.

Padmé hadn't realised quite how much she wanted this.

*********

Obi-Wan is in the kitchen with Anakin when she gets back that evening. He stands up with a smile when he sees her.

"Doctor Naberrie. Or did you decide to take his name? I advise against it, it'll only feed his ego."

Padmé laughs and kisses his cheek. "I think I can handle his ego just fine, Master Kenobi."

"Please. Obi-Wan."

"Padmé. After all, we're family now."

She says it with a smile and a firm look, and for a moment Obi-Wan looks startled, but then he smiles back, a little hesitantly, as if it's not something he's used to –

No, he's used to having it. He's just not used to admitting to himself that he does.

"Yes, I suppose we are."

Padmé shoots her husband a grin. "You didn't have a fight, did you?"

"Of course not," Anakin says, grinning back. "At least, not by our standards. The, uh, the living room is still a little..."

"Oh, for Force's sake," Obi-Wan objects. "I'm not here to make a bad impression on her, you know. I just came to drop off Artoo," he explains to Padmé, "and the rest of Ani's clutter, of course."

Padmé raises her eyebrows. "I didn't realise he _had_ clutter. I thought Jedi disapproved of clutter."

"As a rule," Obi-Wan agrees. "I really should be going, Padmé, Anakin."

Anakin stands up to shake hands with him, smiling faintly. "I – uh. I'm sorry I won't be there to watch your back."

Obi-Wan frowns slightly. "I don't think I am," he admits. "I think – you _should_ be here. I sense it's the right decision, Anakin. And I am very proud of you for making it."

Anakin smiles, pleased and proud and grateful. He meets Padmé's eyes and she touches a hand to her stomach; he nods briefly.

"There's something else," he says quietly to his brother.

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, curious.

"Padmé's pregnant. We're having twins."

Obi-Wan goes from amazed to delighted to horrified in about three seconds flat.

"Oh, Force," he says. "I hope you won't ever expect me to babysit, Anakin, once was enough! And two of them! From _scratch_ this time!"

Padmé bursts out laughing and insists on pouring them both a celebratory drink, delaying Obi-Wan's departure by over an hour.

*********

"Oh, I almost forgot," Anakin says sleepily as she settles into his arms that night. He loves to sleep naked, but Padmé is in a thin nightdress that's doing a lovely job of hugging all her new curves, and she's fairly certain that they, and the slinky material that's going to be pressed against his skin, will have him wide awake in not very long at all.

"Hmm?" she says absently, making sure she's shifting against him in all the right ways.

"The Holonet managed to find out who my mystery wife was just before Obi-Wan came over. And your mother's been comming all evening."

Padmé freezes up, groans, struggles to get upright again. "My _mother_... oh Force, we shoulda told them right away... aah. All right. I'm going to go..."

But Anakin's hands slide over her hips from behind before she can leave their bed, pulling her backwards. They brush over the hem of her nightdress interestedly before moving further along, slipping up to trace circles around her knees, once twice, fingertips tracing the jagged scar on her left knee that she picked up during the Battle of Naboo, and then they travel back the way they came, caressing the soft skin of her inner thighs, gently pushing them apart. His breath is warm on the side of her neck and somehow he's moved so that she's sitting between his legs with her back to his chest and her head's falling back against his shoulder of its own accord and her fingers are flexing against the taut muscle of his thighs while his _hands_...

Oh, _yes_. Wide awake.

"No, you're not," he says huskily.

No, she's not.

*********

Padmé calls in sick to work the next day and spends most of it in front of the Holonet, staring in mounting horror at the media circus that has become her marriage – her whole life, in fact. The reporters aren't allowed inside the apartment building, but there are a good few of them camped out front, and even more on their way to Theed, presumably, and her mother has been on the commlink three times already, mostly just to wail and gnash her teeth, Padmé thinks viciously, which isn't entirely fair, because, three years of a secret relationship with and now a semi-secret wedding to the most famous man in the galaxy and babies on the way, but she's pregnant and irritable and her whole life has just been turned upside down, she's allowed to be nasty about her mother in the privacy of her own mind.

"I don't understand why they insist on dropping all these hints that you're some kind of calculating gold-digger," Anakin says, frustrated, halfway through the afternoon. "I'm not exactly the richest man in the galaxy here. Jedi don't _have_ possessions."

Of course, he's sitting on the floor elbow-deep in that astromech of his as he speaks, and the kitchen table is piled with datapads and flimsis that Obi-Wan brought over yesterday. Padmé had a poke through them that morning while he was still asleep: everything from old study assignments to research of his own to starship designs to lightsabre specs (she'd always thought you were supposed to build those by instinct and the seat of your pants or something) to a journal she doesn't stoop to reading, even though she'd like to.

There's a half-formed plan in the back of her mind that involves getting him to sell the starship designs to one of the big companies and make a career out of them. Anakin should spend his life doing something he loves, and he loves to fly.

*********

Interestingly, the reporters are gone when Padmé leaves for work the next morning. She wants to worry about it, but decides there are more important things.

Besides, she's grateful she doesn't have to deal with them.

Anakin's still asleep. She brushes a stray curl off his forehead and touches her fingertips to his lips in farewell before she goes, smiling to herself. Obi-Wan was right: this was the right decision for him. Padmé had been worried – about Anakin, about the Republic, about the war and his sense of duty and a thousand other things.

But she has rarely seen him look so untroubled, not since Naboo, that first week at Varykino before the nightmares about his mother started again, when he kissed her in the kitchen while Sabé was unpacking upstairs and Padmé tilted her head back and leaned into him, sliding her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck and kissing him back with equal fervour and a lot more finesse (but oh, how eagerly he'd learned from her) and imagined – this.

*********

It's midmorning when Anakin is woken by the door chime. He drags himself out of bed and tugs his pants on before grabbing his lightsabre, fully intending to wreak havoc on a few holocameras before he crawls back under the covers, and opens the front door only to come face to face with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

Anakin glances down at the sabre in his hand and feels like an idiot.

"Chancellor!"

Palpatine looks amused, eyes twinkling. "My dear boy. I take it you weren't expecting me?"

Anakin grins at him. "I have to get my practice in where I can these days."

The Chancellor chuckles, same friendly understanding as ever. "Of course, of course. Would you mind –"

He gestures towards Anakin, who realises he's blocking the doorway to the apartment as if Palpatine were the enemy, and jumps aside, scratching at the back of his head ruefully.

"If you'll just wait in the kitchen, sir, and let me grab a shirt..."

"It's a charming apartment, Anakin," Palpatine calls after him as he ducks into the bedroom.

"It's entirely Padmé's," Anakin calls back. "I'm just the lodger."

"Naturally," Palpatine murmurs.

"Caf?" Anakin asks. "Breakfast, even? It turns out pregnancy and bacon sandwiches go really well together as far as my wife is concerned."

He can't quite keep the pride out of his voice when he says _my wife_. For three years and more he's been feeling progressively more of a fool and a failure that he hasn't been able to give her what she deserves, and finally he's in a position to start correcting that.

"Caf will be fine, thank you," Palpatine says. "Is she not here, your wife? I would very much like to meet her."

"At work."

"The medcentre, of course. She intends to stay there after the child is born?"

"Well, it's not like the Jedi are paying me a pension," Anakin says ruefully. "To be honest we haven't quite figured out how we're going to manage the working thing yet – she earns enough that technically I don't have to, but... I like to work. And I'd feel like a sponger if I didn't."

Palpatine nods. "I think she might argue with that definition. She plainly loves you."

Anakin sets the cups of caf down on the table and drops into the chair opposite his friend. "Of course. But I –" he sighs. "On Tatooine, you provide for the people you love. Even if they might not need it in that exact moment. And I just can't take it for granted that – no unforeseen catastrophes will occur. Not that I'm expecting – ah. I don't even really know."

"It's quite natural to want to protect them," Palpatine assures him. "To want to do _everything_ you can to ensure their safety, no matter what."

Anakin smiles and nods, takes a few sips and feels himself begin to wake up properly. "But you didn't come here to talk about my future income, did you, sir?"

"Hmm," Palpatine says, frowning a little into his own cup. "Well, actually, my boy, in a sense I did."

_Then he can hobble down here and ask me himself_, Anakin told Padmé when she asked what would happen if the Chancellor wanted him to retain his commission in the Army. A chill chases down his spine.

"Sir?"

"I'm here to ask for your help, Anakin," Palpatine says quietly. Almost grimly, in fact. "I know you have been out of the loop, so to speak, politically, but things are in motion now. Peace is becoming ever more of a possibility, especially since Dooku's death in your duel. But I'm afraid that several of my political enemies are using the last days of the war to make a grab for power while the Republic is still unstable, before any overtures can even be made towards the Separatist leadership."

"I... see," Anakin says slowly, and wonders, for the first time in all the thirteen years he's been friends with this man, what in Kessel the point of this conversation is. He's impatient, he realises, with all this beating around the bush; a thought never before associated with Palpatine.

With the Order, yes. With the Council. Sometimes even with Obi-Wan. But Palpatine, of all people?

"I wonder if you do," Palpatine says. "Anakin, my boy, I need all the allies I can get – the Republic needs all the allies she can get – if we are to end this war at last and stabilise the galaxy."

"That makes sense."

Palpatine nods slowly. Anakin gets the impression that his non-committal answers aren't quite what the other man was expecting. Ruefully, he thinks he had much more of a temper the last time they sat down to talk. Of course, that was back when he was still expected to care, to do something about it, to worry about the whole galaxy instead of just his family.

"I wonder if you realise how much confidence you inspire in people?" Palpatine asks. "How much of a symbol of goodness, of right, that you've become? The Hero With No Fear is a very powerful ally in these troubled times, Anakin. You have almost more power with the people of the Republic than I do. Your support would lend any new government instant legitimacy with them."

"New government?" Anakin says quietly. "But surely we're talking about the restoration of the old one?"

Padmé's lectures about Opposition politics have plainly infected him.

Palpatine waves a hand. "Eventually, yes," he says. "The galaxy is teetering on the brink at the moment, Anakin. Committees alone will not bring it back from the edge."

Anakin nods slowly, waits for him to continue.

"I want you to return to service," Palpatine continues, watching him closely. "I want you on my side, Anakin. You would retain your old rank of General – actually, you would probably be given a promotion. You would have authority to oversee many of the rest of the command staff – to implement your own changes as you think them necessary. More than once you've spoken to me about how excessive bureaucracy and the timidity of some officials have endangered lives – here is your chance to end that. To make a difference, not just to the soldiers, but to the galaxy. With your help, I could re-establish the control I need to begin meaningful negotiations with the Separatists."

For a moment, Anakin wants to say yes. The list of things that need changing – improving – in the Grand Army of the Republic is a long one, and he could do it: no more delayed supply ships because the money's not there, no more bureaucratic wrangling with this office and that, pristine equipment, better food for the men. A real chance to help force along the peace process...

Force.

The Force.

Is this what it wants from him?

For what is perhaps the first time in his adult life, Anakin Skywalker pauses before he makes a decision. Actually thinks it through, methodical as he can be, he who thinks with his gut and his instinct rather than his brain.

If the peace process is successful, what need for the Army at all?

And what would he be, in this new order: a bureaucrat himself? A field commander still? The thought makes him shiver. To go back to _that_, back to the killing fields and the mud and the rain that freezes your skin and soaks through your clothes, leaving them heavy and wet and chafing, tiny little inconveniences that mean more than all the deaths and the mutilations and the children's toys in the rubble and that poor woman at Christophsis who'd put the muzzle of the blaster in her mouth and pulled the trigger right in front of him after her rape at the hands of a Separatist mercenary put together because the little things you can grasp and hate and understand but those others are just too much –

Anakin's hands are clenched into fists, pressing into his thighs. He closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing, on releasing it all into the Force.

It takes a while.

Palpatine watches him through hooded eyes as he struggles back to Coruscant, not saying a word. In a way, it's what he needs, that silence, and in a way it isn't, because Padmé always puts her arms around him and tries her best to help and comfort him. Anakin has never done this in front of anyone but her before, not really, and suddenly he wants his friend gone with a fervour that surprises him, wants him out of this apartment and out of his life, and may he take his sithing war with him and never look back.

"I don't believe I can," he says at last. "I'm sorry, Chancellor."

Is that anger? A flash of temper, exasperation?

"You have a duty, Anakin, to the Republic. To the people of the Republic, who still need you."

"I have a duty to my wife," Anakin says too softly.

The 501st could have told their Chancellor that Anakin Skywalker is only barely beginning to get truly dangerous when he becomes so perfectly calm.

"And your friendship with me?"

"I value it, I always have."

"But not as much as this." Palpatine casts a glance around the apartment. By his standards, it's just about primitive. Too small, too messy.

"Naturally not."

Why won't he understand? Can't he see what he's doing, acting just the way the Order always did, demanding that Anakin choose one way or another, refusing to believe that it's possible to compromise? It doesn't have to be this way: Anakin doesn't want to betray his friend, but he can't give him everything he is, not anymore, and if he won't accept less, if he insists on dealing in absolutes like this...

They lock gazes over the table top. Anakin briefly wonders if Palpatine's political opponents have seen this steel in him always, or if it's a new development, a mask coming down that only he has ever seen. It doesn't matter.

The Chancellor is his friend, but Padmé is his family.

Odd, but Palpatine can't seem to hold his gaze for too long, as if there's something there that hurts him. That he cannot stand against.

"I see you're determined," he says, and stands up. "I'm sorry for that."

Anakin stands up as well, and his eye catches on something lying on the table between their caf cups: his lightsabre.

(His mother would probably have called it a sign.)

"I'm not," he says honestly, and there it is again, that flash of temper.

In the artificial light of the kitchen, Palpatine's eyes look almost yellow.

*********

A strange sort of madness seems to take the lower levels that afternoon, and the medcentre is overflowing with patient from one moment to the next. Padmé performs six major surgeries, sleeps for a total of nine hours on the couch in the doctor's lounge over a period of two days, disinfects and bandages countless blaster wounds, sets two broken arms and sits in on one of Liran's surgeries because her grasp of Rodian anatomy has never been as good as she'd like it to be, and he's the expert.

Once a girl with curlers in her hair and a burn scar up her leg where she'd crawled out of the wreckage of her apartment building after a gang set it on fire pokes at her shoulder interestedly.

"I've seen you before," she announces.

"I doubt that," Padmé says, smiling. "I don't get out of this place much." She winks at her.

But the girl is not to be deterred. "Yeah, I have," she insists. "You're Anakin Skywalker's wife."

Padmé sucks in a breath, surprised at being addressed that way, and then breaks into a broad grin. "Yes, I am," she says.

The girl glares at her. "I decided not to like you," she says. "_I_ wanted to marry him."

Padmé ruffles her hair, still grinning. "Oh, I'm sorry, little one. But he's mine, and no one else is having him."

*********

When she gets home at last (the Boss finally caught on to that whole pregnancy thing that Padmé's been trying to talk to her about for the last three weeks, ordered her off the premises demanding what she thought she was doing still working so much and agreed to Padmé taking her six-month maternity leave starting tomorrow and oh, by the way, she has excellent taste in men. Padmé smirked and told her she knew that already.), the apartment is empty, and something – something feels _wrong_.

Anakin left her a holo on the kitchen table.

"Love, I have to go to the Chancellor's offices, something's happening – Obi-Wan's here, he needs me. Listen, don't worry about anything, OK? I _will_ see you soon. I adore you, Padmé."

It's the emphasis he puts on _will_ that tips her off to the fact that he thinks there's a good chance he's not coming back at all.

She leaves the apartment at a run.

*********

Galactic City is in absolute chaos. There are people everywhere, panic and screaming, soldiers trying desperately to restore order, broken glass on the sidewalks, a crashed speeder, fights breaking out. Padmé runs from the shuttle station through the streets to Senate Plaza, pushing through the crowds and dodging the soldiers. There's smoke rising from the Senate Building, and the troopers are herding people away from the Plaza in an effort to get the Building evacuated. Padmé spares a brief thought for Sabé, but no more.

She has to get to Anakin. There's an urgency thrumming in her blood, pounding in her head; where this conviction that he needs her has come from, she doesn't know, but it's there, pushing her on. Is this what it feels like to feel the Force? Who knows. Who cares? He needs her. That's enough.

Padmé pushes past a group of shaken-looking Senatorial aides and aims for the Rotunda entrance, but a trooper grabs her arm.

"Madam, the building is being evacuated – you have to leave, now!"

"My husband is in there," Padmé snarls, trying to shake his hand off her arm. His Legion markings catch her eye, and she wonders –

"I understand, madam, but I can't permit you to go in there!"

"You're a member of the 501st," she says.

He nods, uncertain.

"Anakin Skywalker was your commanding officer."

He pulls his helmet off with his free hand. "But you're that his wife – that doctor."

"Padmé Skywalker, yes. Captain..."

"Rex, ma'am. The General..."

"He needs me. He needs my help. Please, Captain. He's spoken of you often – called you a friend..."

Rex glances around, looking uncertain. Then he sighs. "Trust General Skywalker to get me into trouble even after he's left the damn Army," he says ruefully. "This way, ma'am!"

"You're coming with me?"

Rex gives her a piercing look. "I'm not about to let Anakin Skywalker's pregnant wife walk into that place on her own."

Padmé smiles. "Thank you, Captain. Can you tell me what's going on?" They're hurrying through the crowds now, troopers parting for Rex easily and without question. Padmé gets a few curious looks, and she wonders if they recognise her.

"I don't know for sure," Rex admits. "But a little over an hour ago several members of the Jedi Council arrived to speak to Chancellor Palpatine. About twenty minutes after that, Generals Skywalker and Kenobi were seen running towards the Chancellor's offices, and at around the time they would have reached there, the signal for the evacuation of the Senate Rotunda was given. It's been chaos ever since."

Somehow, they've gotten inside the building, rushing along an empty corridor carpeted in red and brown. There's a set of turbolifts at the other end, a few hundred yards away, and more corridors branching off left and right at regular intervals.

"Leads to the docking bays," Rex says briefly. "Maintenance, catering and so on got their offices down here. Those turbolifts lead directly to the Chancellor's floor – this entrance began life as an evacuation route."

"Thank you, Captain," Padmé says again as they reach the lifts. She presses a hand to her belly as the twins kick at her, anxious, worried. "Thank you so much."

Rex glances down at her pregnant stomach, mouth twitching in a faint smile. "Congratulations, by the way," he says, and she manages a laugh.

The lift ride is taken in silence. Rex checks his blaster, hands sure and steady, and Padmé slumps against the wall and struggles to get her breath back and calm the twins down, stroking over her belly as they twist inside her. Can they feel what's happening to their father? Are they the ones impressing this need to get to Anakin on her, this knowledge that he needs her _now_?

"The smoke," she says suddenly. "I saw smoke."

Rex glances at her sideways. "It was coming from the windows of the Chancellor's offices."

Padmé gasps. She wants to cry, to scream, to break down in tears, to grab a blaster of her own and shoot someone, anyone, to demand an explanation of whoever's in authority here – the Force, the Jedi Council, the Chancellor, she doesn't know.

But she swore an oath, and she discarded panic long years ago, and Anakin has never seen her cry, not from fear and weakness. She won't start now.

The Chancellor's secretary and aides have all fled. The doors to his offices are shut; Rex opens them by methods Padmé strongly suspects are highly illegal.

Stepping inside is like being punched in the gut. Automatically, training and practise take over: lightsabre wound. Death instantaneous. Decapitation. Another lightsabre wound, nothing she can do. _Rigor mortis_ sets in quickly in Nautolans. The wind rushing through the antechamber carries a stench of ozone and old blood.

The office of the Supreme Chancellor is in shambles. Furniture overturned, art destroyed, the body of Jedi Master Mace Windu at her feet. Padmé checks his pulse, catalogues his injuries mechanically, nods at Rex. _Call someone, he's still alive._

Obi-Wan is slumped on the dais, by the Chancellor's heavy desk. There's blood on his forehead and a faint trembling in his limbs, unconscious, cardiac and respiratory arrest – she can't see any electrical burns, but that's electrocution just the same, and Padmé turns; Rex is still bent by Master Windu.

"Rex! CPR, quick." She leaves Obi-Wan in his capable hands and comes around the corner of the desk.

Anakin is sprawled on the floor in front of her, between desk and window. Beyond him, there's a pile of robes and what looks like the charred remains of a human corpse, but Padmé barely registers it. Her husband is lying on his back, lightsabre fallen from his outflung right hand, breathing harsh and irregular, eyes closed. There's heavy bruising around his neck, consistent with attempted strangulation, and deep angry wounds around his left eye as if something has tried to scratch it out. There's a lightsabre wound in his left arm and another in his right thigh – right hip too – but the one that worries Padmé the most is the one in his left side that the blood is leaking out of.

Idiot already yanked the knife out.

She's kneeling over him with her hands pressed to his side to stem the bleeding when his eyes flutter open.

"Padmé."

"Don't you know better than to go pulling knives out of wounds like that?" she demands. "No, stay still. Obi-Wan is gonna be fine. Master Windu might be a little more touch and go, that was a nasty head wound. You're gonna be in bacta for a week, genius. And you scarred that pretty face."

"Married me for my looks?" he rasps, chokes and coughs. There's no blood; his lungs are still intact. Internal bleeding, trauma, exhaustion, possibly also electrocution like Obi-Wan.

"They were a major factor, yes," she says. "Along with the penthouse and the private fortune."

She thinks the cough was meant to be a laugh. Anakin's eyes are falling shut again; there are shouts in the background, men swarming into the offices, Obi-Wan being lifted on a stretcher, a medic coming up beside her.

"Anakin," Padmé says. "Look at me, my love. That's it. You're going to be fine. Understand? Just hold on. Hold on for me. For Luke and Leia."

He meets her eyes and nods.


	3. scaled these city walls the end

_this is a disclaimer._

**scaled these city walls (the end)  
**

"It was around sixteen-hundred that General Kenobi arrived at my wife's apartment," Anakin says. "He told me he needed my help – that the Jedi Council had proof that Chancellor Palpatine was in fact the Sith Lord who called himself Darth Sidious, known to be the Master of the late Count Dooku, and therefore presumably the man Dooku had been taking orders from all along. General Kenobi asked me to accompany him to the Chancellor's offices to aid in the arrest."

Senator Organa nodded. "And you complied because?"

Anakin pauses, considering his next words. There's barely a sound in the entire Senate Hall; it feels as if half the galaxy is waiting for his testimony.

"It would be wrong to say I suspected the Chancellor myself," he says at last. "But recent events had made me... wonder about his motives. When Obi-Wan told me... I found I wasn't surprised." He pauses again before adding, because that explanation is calm and objective and clinical and faultless, "And I complied because Obi-Wan asked me to."

Beside him, his former Master shifts slightly, head turning towards Anakin, smile hidden in his beard.

"Your inference, I take it, is that if it had been Master Windu, say, who had come to you to ask for your help..." Senator Organa says slowly, inviting Anakin's reply.

He shrugs. "I've made no secret of my resignation from the Order. And I think my marriage is proof enough that I don't consider myself answerable to their Council anymore."

There's a brief titter of laughter in the Hall. Senator Organa allows himself a slight grin.

"Your marriage was preceded by a relationship with Doctor Naberrie that took place while you were under the jurisdiction of the Jedi High Council."

Anakin grins back. "All right. So I've never really considered myself bound by some of their more... outdated rules."

Across the way, in the other pod, Mace Windu is watching him expressionlessly.

"In short," Senator Organa says, "you flouted the rules of the Jedi over a period of several years in order to pursue a relationship with Doctor Naberrie, finally resigning from the Jedi and the Grand Army of the Republic when the two of you married, kept your new suspicions about Chancellor Palpatine to yourself and went to interrupt a lawful arrest by the Jedi High Council solely on the word of your former mentor. You realise that no matter the outcome, your actions in and of themselves were highly irregular – dancing on illegal, in fact – and therefore smack of a certain... arrogant disregard for the rules of law?"

Anakin's temper began to rise with the very first word, and he can't stop himself from snapping when he answers. "Palpatine offered me a position in the Army," he says sharply. "He phrased it more politely, but essentially he wanted me to be a kind of enforcer, the instrument of his will. He talked of my popularity giving him a certain legitimacy, he spoke of taking control, reorganising – the Army, on the face of it, but it shouldn't be hard to read between the lines. What it came down to was a choice between my friendship with him and my wife and children – just as the Order previously expected me to choose between my family and my Force abilities when I was a boy. I chose the Order then. It was a mistake. And I never make the same mistake twice."

The murmuring starts at the top of the Hall and spreads outwards and downwards in waves of sound. Senator Organa sucks in a breath. "A mistake?"

Anakin winces. He hadn't meant to say that, to expose himself like that – his tongue's too sharp and too quick when he's angry, always has been, Padmé's called him on it more than once. "Yes," he says. "In many ways, yes. My mother was murdered on my homeworld just before the start of the war. If I'd been there I – there might have been something I could have done."

He thinks the muttering turns sympathetic, but it's hard to be sure.

"This was during your assignment to protect Senator Nertay."

"Yes."

"When you also met Doctor Naberrie."

"Is this an inquest into Palpatine's death or an interview for the gossip rags?" Anakin snaps.

"Temper, Ani," Obi-Wan murmurs. "They want to understand you."

Anakin snorts. "Good luck with that," he says quietly.

Obi-Wan grins. "I certainly wouldn't dare try."

But Senator Organa nods. "Point taken. My apologies; we merely wish to understand the course of events that has led us to this point."

Anakin nods back, feeling a little silly but with absolutely no intention of apologising.

"Moving on then. Would you summarise what happened when you and General Kenobi reached the Chancellor's offices that night?"

"Most of the Masters who had gone to confront and arrest Palpatine were already dead," Anakin says quietly. "The man was extremely powerful, an expert swordsman. When we found – when we found them we set off the evacuation signal. Duels like that can be destructive, especially when the duellists are strong in the Force. And there was also a chance that someone would send to the Temple, so that we'd have backup. Master Windu was duelling Palpatine when we reached the inner office."

He remembers: transparisteel window shattered, room destroyed, angry wind sweeping towards them, and Windu standing over Palpatine with his sabre drawn, the old man's call to Anakin for help –

He swallows. "Well, I say duelling. By the looks of things, Palpatine was already defeated. He asked for my help."

Another wave of muttering.

"Your _help_?" Senator Organa says blankly.

Obi-Wan steps forward. "If I may, Senator?"

He catches Anakin's eye and jerks his head very slightly: _get off that podium_. Anakin frowns at him, but Obi-Wan's steady glare doesn't waver. He steps down to let him reach the microphone.

"Senator, it's our suspicion – Anakin's and mine – that the Chancellor was hoping to turn him to the Dark Side eventually. Palpatine was not otherwise a man to take unnecessary risks, yet it seems to me that asking for Anakin's help just then was pushing him too far, and Palpatine must have realised that. I believe it's safe to say that the Council's move to arrest him forced his hand in this matter, to the point where his appeals to Anakin were made out of desperation and a last-ditch attempt to find a way to save himself rather than any real conviction that Anakin was susceptible to his words. I honestly think the last thing in the galaxy that Palpatine wanted at that moment was to have to duel Anakin Skywalker – one of the most powerful Force-users the Order has ever seen."

Uh-oh. He's in lecture mode. Anakin should have known better than to give him that mike.

"As for the reasons why we tried to intervene in the arrest... the most important part of the Jedi way, as I'm sure many of you are aware, is the precept that we use violence as a defence and a last resort, not to attack. An aspect of that is that we do not kill unarmed prisoners; that we do not kill full stop except to defend ourselves or others. Chancellor Palpatine had been disarmed – he appeared to have been defeated –"

Senator Organa interrupts. "Are you accusing Master Windu of attempting the killing of an unarmed man? Murder, in short?"

Obi-Wan squares his jaw and his shoulders, feeling a heavy weight settle on him. What he's about to do is irreversible, unfixable. A betrayal of the Order.

But still less of a betrayal than what Master Windu had in mind that night.

"Yes."

It takes several minutes to restore order in the Hall. The entire Senate is in uproar, shocked and horrified. Windu sits like stone, grim, silent and unmoving. Anakin has a hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder, silent support. When he looks up, he catches Windu's gaze, and sees something there: worry and introspection as well as anger.

_Too late_, he thinks. _Months too late_.

Finally, Organa gets the chance to ask another question. "Master Kenobi, would you elaborate, please?"

Obi-Wan nods at his friend. "Perhaps 'accusing' is the wrong word. You see, when the Chancellor's arrest was agreed on in Council at the Temple, several things became clear to me. One of them was the fact that Palpatine would, if he were the Sith Lord, never come quietly. Never be taken alive. The others had to know it too. What we were calling an arrest was, in practical terms, nothing more than an assassination mission."

He pauses then, hands tightening on the railing on either side of the mike he's speaking into. "I feared for the future of the Jedi Order, Senators, if Palpatine died at our hands that night. I feared what we might become in the wake of his death. I still do. It's true that Sidious was too dangerous to be left alive. We could not have held him. We could not have put him on trial. It's a dilemma I still have no answer to, even now. But to destroy him in that manner, to cast aside our principles and claim that the end justified the means, would have gone against everything the Order is meant to uphold, and begin to lead us down a path that Palpatine would have been only too delighted with."

"You went to the Chancellor's offices with the intention of preventing the death of Palpatine."

"I did."

"You did so out of concern that the act of killing him would... what, lead the Jedi Council to become Sith themselves?"

Laughter. Open disbelief. Indignation, anger, fear. But no one makes a move to interrupt.

"It takes more than one murder to make a Sith, from what I can tell," Obi-Wan says dryly. "But every journey has a first step. I had no intention of letting that become ours. I _had_ to do something."

Organa lets that stand for several seconds. Lets it sink in. He's being maybe a little manipulative in favour of his friends, but there are other questioners to come, more cross-examinations, and it's safe to say that some of them will be downright hostile towards them. "You asked for Anakin Skywalker's help because..."

"I trust him above anyone else in the galaxy."

Anakin turns his head to hide a grin; he's never been able to graciously accept praise from Obi-Wan.

It means too much coming from him.

The Senate collectively nods and murmurs in approval. Senator Organa hides a grin of his own: the media have spent four years now building up the image of Kenobi and Skywalker, unbeatable team. Seeing it confirmed like that might just win them this whole game, and neither of them even realise it.

At least, he thinks they don't.

"The idea that he might be susceptible to the Dark Side himself didn't occur? Especially considering that he had already left the Order?"

"It occurred."

"But?"

"I've known Anakin for thirteen years, and never has he seemed as much himself – as much at peace – as he has since his marriage to Padmé and resignation from the Order. Several times during the war I was concerned for him, in more ways than one. But when I visited them, before leaving for Utapau, I sensed Anakin had made the right choice."

Obi-Wan looks over at his former apprentice, his friend and brother, and smiles faintly. "I have no concerns for Anakin anymore. And I doubt I ever will again."

Senator Organa sighs. "Thank you, Master Kenobi. Senators! This session is concluded; we will continue in two days time, at ten hundred hours standard timekeeping. I bid you a good night."

He glances across at Anakin and grins suddenly. "By the way, Master Skywalker. I realise it's a little late, but congratulations on the birth of your twins."

Anakin smiles back. "Thank you, Senator."

*********

Padmé is sitting on their bed propped against a pile of pillows, feeding Leia; mother and daughter are wearing almost identical intense expressions. Leia's tiny hands are grasping firmly at the bottle, legs kicking a little. Luke is lying at the other side of the bed, close to his mother's knees, apparently trying with great concentration and determination to put his toe in his mouth.

Anakin leans against the doorframe and watches them, wishing for a holocamera – or better yet, a time machine, to stop the turning of the world and trap them all in this moment for eternity.

Padmé's mouth twitches a little.

"I know you're there," she says without looking up.

"I was wishing for a holocam."

"I was wishing for a bigger apartment."

He laughs in spite of himself. "Yeah, I can't imagine how small this place is going to feel once they start crawling."

"But?"

Anakin looks around at the worn furniture, the piles of baby things, the high small windows, par for the course in crowded Coruscant apartment buildings.

"Some of the happiest memories of my life took place in these four walls."

Finally, Padmé looks at him. "You manipulative bastard."

"Hey, could you not corrupt my children with your foul language before they're even a year old, please?"

"Depends!"

"On what?"

"How much longer it's going to take you to get over here and kiss me."

About two seconds. He tilts her head back, cupping her face in his hands, and kisses her softly and slowly, putting all the love and tenderness he feels for her into it. She kisses back, gently at first, and then slides her tongue along his lips and slips inside, just daring him –

Leia squawks indignantly when her father's jacket pokes her shoulder. Anakin's leaning over Padmé all passion and strength, breathing quickly when they pull apart.

Padmé licks her lips at him and thinks she can taste him on them. He groans and shuts his eyes against the sight: hair tousled by his fingers, lips swollen, cheeks flushed. She's the loveliest thing he's ever seen.

Well, almost, he amends when he glances down.

He brushes his left hand across his daughter's forehead soothingly. "I'm sorry, Princess. Your Mom got a little carried away."

"She certainly did," Padmé mutters resentfully. Anakin stands up to pull his jacket off; then he lifts Luke into his lap and sits down next to her, grinning down at his son.

"You look like you've been enjoying yourself today, young Master Skywalker."

Luke makes a noise that sounds like "Guh!" and waves his hands up at his father cheerfully.

"He's not smiling," Padmé says automatically.

"Sure he is."

She does smile. "How was the enquiry?"

"Well, Obi-Wan said a lot of complimentary things about the both of us."

"Anakin!"

He sighs. "I don't know, love. They're not about to arrest anyone for murder, but I... it's been months. The media have been baying for Jedi blood since the moment the reconvened Council tried claiming the fight with Palpatine was private Jedi business, and the Senate hasn't been much better. Peace with the Separatists went a long way to fixing that, seeing as how Obi-Wan was so heavily involved in the negotiations, but..."

"But you're afraid that this investigation will tear open old wounds and make public opinion swing against the Order again."

"Yes."

"Why do you care so much? They took you away from your mother and spent thirteen years denying you everything you needed. They would have kept us apart if they could have. And they tried to take the twins away from us."

Anakin sucks in a breath. If he weren't holding Luke, he'd be clenching his fists in anger. If he weren't holding Luke, he'd probably jump up and wreck something – the bedside table, the dresser, the entire apartment, whatever. Just the memory of Master Ursan standing in the doorway _expecting_ him to turn over his children, as if she had never so much as considered the possibility that Anakin and Padmé might exercise their legal right to refuse her...

"I don't know," he admits when he's got his voice back. "I... aah. The galaxy needs the Jedi, Padmé. When I was a child I used to dream that one day they'd come to Tatooine and free all the slaves. That no true Jedi would allow slavery to exist if they could help it. Just their existence meant hope, you know? And sometimes hope is all you've got, my love."

Padmé leans left and rests her head on his shoulder. Leia is yawning hugely in her mother's lap.

"And now?"

"People still need them," he says quietly. "But they need to change. And they need to do it fast."

*********

There is a disturbance in the Force when Master Windu returns to the Temple, a flicker-swirl as of a stream gushing over an obstacle and then returning to its rightful course. Yoda sits in the Council chambers, ostensibly in meditation, and waits for his –

Friend? Yes, although the word implies an attachment which may not be.

"Forsaken us, Master Kenobi has," he says when Mace enters.

"Yes," the other agrees quietly, taking his own seat. Then he comes straight to the heart of the matter. "Master Yoda. I fear he was not wrong to do so."

Yoda looks up. "A different course of action, you feel you should have taken?"

Mace pauses, those niggling doubts suggesting he say yes, and then realises that actually, he doesn't feel he should have done anything differently. Palpatine was too dangerous to be left alone. He would have destroyed not just the Jedi but the Republic, brought years, if not decades, of conflict and division to the galaxy.

He had to be stopped.

And yet.

Mace sighs. "I can no longer tell."

"Clouded, the Force still is."

"But the Sith are destroyed. Anakin Skywalker has fulfilled his destiny."

Yoda appears thoughtful. "Has he?" he asks softly. "Has he truly, Master Windu? Finished, you think he is? A happy ending, in store for him?"

"What more can he possibly do?" Mace wants to know.

"Much. Perhaps too much. Dangerous he remains, despite Master Kenobi's words."

But Mace shakes his head. "Master Yoda, you were not there. Anakin will not fall. In that, at least, I agree with Kenobi."

For the first time, a sharp edge creeps into Yoda's voice. "Refused the Temple his children, he has. Leave them vulnerable, he does. Powerful they could still be, but training they must receive! Proper training, yes. Always young Skywalker's attachments cloud his judgement. Selfish he is to deny them their birthright."

"I can't believe I'm defending the man," Mace says, looking troubled. "But... perhaps he has a different idea of what that birthright _is_, Master."

Yoda sighs. "Saved your life they did," he says. "Kenobi, Skywalker, Doctor Naberrie. A debt, you feel, and correct that is. But keep a clear head you must, Master Windu. Guidance of the Force alone, we listen to."

Mace bows his head.

*********

Anakin spends the next morning at the kitchen table with a datapad and the Holonet connection, making lists and doing sums and wondering where in Kessel they're going to find an apartment on Coruscant that's fairly close to the medcentre Padmé works at that they can actually afford. It's not an easy task when his own future income is still completely hypothetical.

Luke, propped against a pile of cushions on the kitchen floor, disapproves of his father's current preoccupation with something that is not him. Leia too is sulking over some stuffed toy or other, poking at it listlessly.

The message is clear: _Daddy, come play!_

"This is for your future, all right?" Anakin tells them. "I'm trying to find a way to support us. You can manage to play by yourselves for a few hours while I try and secure our future, can't you? You can't always be thinking about instant gratification."

Leia drops a string of beads accidentally and her face instantly scrunches up in preparation of a good long cry. Anakin groans and climbs off his chair to pick it up for her.

"It would help if I could just figure out what kind of work I want to be doing," he says to them. "Your mother thinks I should be selling starship designs. The easiest and fastest way to make money right now is work as a mechanic, but we're not actually desperate, so there doesn't seem much point to that, especially as there are other things out there that do in fact pay better."

He could swear the twins exchange a look then. The thought makes him grin. "I know, I know. You're more interested in lunch than your old man's future career."

Luke leans forward and pokes at him with a red building block. "Dada," he says, sounding triumphant. _Well done, Dad. You read my mind._

Anakin stares at him in shock and delight. "Luke, did you just talk?!"

"Da," the little boy says, disdainful of his father's excitement, and then Leia hits him with her teddy bear, demanding her fair share of her father's attention, and Anakin can't decide which one of them to snatch up and kiss first.

*********

"You look ridiculously cheerful this morning," Obi-Wan says the next day.

Anakin grins. "Luke said his first word yesterday."

"What, already?"

"He's almost seven months old, Obi-Wan."

"What was it?"

"Dada," Anakin says, trying and failing not to grin like an idiot. "Padmé absolutely seethed with jealousy all evening."

Obi-Wan can't help himself: he bursts out laughing. Anakin's grin widens, takes on a slightly smug slant.

"And how were your forty-eight hours with Sabé?"

"Interesting," Obi-Wan says. "She bullied me into helping her with some diplomatic assignment. Said she didn't want me brooding over my oh-so public betrayal of the Jedi Order."

There's a touch of bitterness to his words. Anakin grimaces a little. Most of the Order probably still think of him as a traitor, too; but it's different for Obi-Wan. He's never had anything else.

"She's a good friend," is all he says.

"Yes," Obi-Wan agrees. "Yes, she is."

They walk in silence for a few minutes, drawing closer to the Senate Rotunda. There's a breeze tugging at Obi-Wan's robes and Anakin raises his face to the sunshine, squinting as he does so. It's like encouragement, that sunshine, bright and warm. Like the touch of his mother's hand.

"You better hope the media never find out where you've been bunking," he says suddenly. "Or before you know it, you and Sabé will be knee-deep in a passionate love affair."

Obi-Wan snorts. "I think one of those between the two of us is more than enough, thank you Anakin."

Anakin grins at him. He's cut his hair short, not much longer than it was when he was a Padawan, and with the radiation-bleached highlights gone, it looks much darker than before. Prominent sabre scar, the thin, faint white lines around his other eye where Sidious, in his dying moments, tried to claw it out before reaching for the vibroblade that very nearly ended Anakin's life, but he still looks so young. Too young to be a Knight, a war hero, a Chosen One. A father and a husband.

It's a gorgeous sunny day, and it feels as if the wind were whispering to them, Obi-Wan thinks. Of peace, of contentment, of work to be done. He's grinning back before he's realised it.

They go inside.

*********

Padmé's scrubbing at her wrists trying to get the blood off (sixteen-year-old caught his hand in some kind of metal junker at the local mechanic's shop or something, and she had a Kessel of a time stitching him up. The kid just couldn't sit still) when Jazu pokes her head into the washroom.

"Padmé. Boss wants to see you."

"On my way," Padmé says, reaching for a towel.

When she gets to the Boss' office, she finds her in the corridor, somewhat to her surprise.

"Boss?"

The Boss points at her office door. "In there," she says. "I don't know what you and that husband of yours have been up to, but if this gets out, the media will be swarming all over this place, and I'd rather not have that happen."

Padmé bites her lip. "All right...?"

The Boss gives her a long, steady look. "Should I call him?" she asks at last, meaning Anakin.

Padmé squares her shoulders. "If you hear me scream."

That gets a grin. Then she pushes the door open and walks inside.

"Doctor Naberrie," Master Yoda greets her. "Taken your husband's name you have not, hmm?"

"No," Padmé says, struggling to keep her calm. "No, I didn't. The twins are Skywalkers, though. My family thinks that's a little ridiculous, but it felt right."

Yoda draws himself up a little, surprised. She crosses her arms over her chest defensively. "They _are_ why you're here, yes?"

"They are," he admits at last.

"The answer is no."

Amusement. "Heard the question, you have not."

"You want to take them away from us."

"Training I wish to give them."

"They're seven months old."

"The correct age."

"To be indoctrinated?"

"To be protected."

Padmé draws a breath. She doesn't want to do this – truly, she doesn't. Master Yoda, by all accounts, is wise, and kind, and gentle, and it's not fair of her to fight dirty with him like this, to fling all his failures in his face.

But he wants to take her children from her, and that she will never allow. In this, she is – has to be – as ruthlessly efficient as her husband is purported to be on the battlefield.

"The way you protected Anakin from Palpatine?"

Yoda stiffens, but then sighs, relaxing again. His shoulders hunch and his ears turn down wearily. What the deaths of half the Jedi Council, a four year galactic war, the knowledge that all this time he has been obeying the orders of a Sith Lord he was not capable of recognising no matter how long he spent in his presence and the defection of the two most well-known members of his Order in the galaxy could not do, Padmé's words have accomplished.

She's made him seem, for the first time, old. Old and defeated.

"Mistakes, many have been made," he says. "Learned from them, we have."

Padmé's come too far to hold back now. "If by _learning_ you mean taking my babies before they can walk rather than waiting until they're nine years old."

"Vulnerable, you leave them," Yoda states flatly. "Open to attack. Dark Side Adepts there may still be, trained by Sidious. Pose a threat to you they will."

Padmé puts steel in her spine, draws herself up to her full height, remembers what it was like to walk and talk and act a Queen.

"And will Palpatine's not-quite-good-enough-for-Sithhood Dark Side _pets_ be capable of defeating the men who killed their master? Because frankly, I doubt that. I saw that office, Master Yoda. I saved my husband's life in that place, and Obi-Wan's, and your Master Windu's, too. I called time of death on four other Jedi Masters. I know what these people are capable of. And I know what they're _not_."

Stricken by the mention of the deaths of his friends, he doesn't answer. She sighs, her anger draining away.

"You don't understand," she tells him softly, almost pityingly. "That determination you have to keep your Order intact? To protect the Jedi way of life?"

He nods slowly.

"It's no different to the way I feel about keeping my children, Master Yoda."

Yoda seems wearily amused. "Harbouring attachments you accuse me of, Doctor Naberrie."

Padmé shrugs. "It was Anakin's attachments that took him to the Chancellor's office when Obi-Wan asked for his help," she says. "It was his attachments that led him to leave the Order to be with me and the twins. Can you really stand there and tell me that last was the wrong decision? Because if so, then you've understood nothing about my husband. Worse, you've understood nothing about what your Jedi way truly does to the people forced to live it."

Yoda studies her in silence for a long time. She doesn't flinch, doesn't fidget, doesn't look away.

Someone has to make him see.

Finally, he inclines his head slowly. "Bother you again with this request, the Order will not," he says quietly. "Respect your decision, we shall, despite my misgivings."

And suddenly Padmé is angry again. "So you sithing well should," she snarls. "Under the laws of the Republic you claim to serve, _this is my decision_. Don't you _dare_ act as if you're making some great exception just to do me a favour."

Yoda actually chuckles. "Met his match, young Skywalker has, hmm?

Despite her fury at his blinding arrogance, Padmé grins. "Oh, definitely," she says.

*********

Padmé's home before him again – he didn't think she was supposed to be back for another few hours. Anakin tosses his jacket over a chair and strides to the door to the living room, quick but quiet in case the twins are asleep. "Love? Did somethi- umf!"

Padmé's on her feet and across the room before he has time to finish the sentence, gluing her lips to his and pouring all the old, familiar passion and need into the kiss: as if they weren't married now, as if the twins had never existed, as if the last year had never happened, as if he's come to her fresh from battle with haunted eyes and bloodstained hands, as if she's been alone for weeks with nothing but her work and her memories of him and one too many patients dead on the operating table. Anakin's hands come up to grab her shoulders; then his arms go around her, hauling her close, breathless and desperate suddenly.

She shoves at him, pushing him back step by step until the backs of his thighs hit the kitchen table and her hands drag down over his chest to his belt –

Anakin breaks the kiss, breathing harshly. "Love – are you –"

"Shut up, Anakin," his wife whispers, eyes fever-bright and urgent. "Shut up and make love to me."

"On the kitchen table?"

"On the kitchen floor for all I care. Get your clothes off and _take me_."

He straightens so he's towering over her and tilts her head back as he kisses her, tongue sweeping into her mouth. Grips her upper arms tightly (come morning she'll get a slow sneaky smile when she sees those finger-shaped bruises, press her lips to the bite marks on his shoulders before she kisses his mouth) as she yanks his belt buckle open – not content with that she grabs the buckle and drags it out of the loops of his pants, the tongue smacking his hip when she tosses it away but that hardly matters when her hands catch and tug at his trousers and then dip and –

_Force_, it's been too long. First his injuries, then the birth, then Senatorial enquiries and physical therapy and official investigations and peace talks and caring for the twins... Anakin presses his face into the side of Padmé's neck to muffle his groans as her small deft hands touch him. His head is pounding suddenly – _closer closer Padmé Padmé_ – and his blood thrums, a familiar rhythm he hadn't realised he'd missed so much. Smell of antiseptic and soap and her shampoo and something rather darker, muskier. She's pressing kisses to his shoulder through his thin shirt, trembling a little in his arms – but not solely with desire.

Something _has_ happened, he thinks, but it doesn't matter, not yet. She needs this first, he can tell: it's in her touch, hard and urgent, in her kiss the same, in her eyes and the quick fluttering of breath and heartbeat in her ribcage delicate, breakable, warm soft stronger than his ever was. Anakin catches her wrists and draws her hands out of his pants, kissing his way up her neck, biting gently at her jaw.

"Behave," low husky whisper. She loves his voice.

Padmé laughs at him, full and throaty, twists her hands out of his grip and catches handfuls of his shirt.

"Up and off," she mocks him, the same thing she'll say to Luke or Leia, undressing them in the evening.

He raises his arms and lets her pull it up, tosses it carelessly away and drops his hands to her blouse, completely focussed on her, holding her gaze with his the way he knows perfectly well never fails to leave her breathless. She gasps as his fingers brush her breasts, arching her back towards him as he undoes the fastenings hiding her, wants to kiss the pale exposed skin but she's not tall and he is, it's awkward hunching over like that to reach her.

It's easy fixed, arms around her waist, lift and turn and lay her down across the kitchen table, spread out before him a vision unforgettable, her head tilted back and her hair fanning out across the solid wood. He licks at her skin, tasting the faint sheen of perspiration in the valley between her breasts, breathing in the smell of her, and her eyes are fluttering, breath coming quickly, cheeks flushed. Every brush of her hands over his shoulders and back and sides and upper arms trails fire across his skin and tightens the coiling need inside him. He returns the favour by moving lower, licking at her navel, always a sensitive spot for her, traces the stretch marks below it with lips and tongue: eternal proof she's borne his children. Padmé gasps again, slides her hands into his hair, desperate catch in her voice when she says –

"Anakin, _yes_, dear Gods –"

- and both of them aching now, trembling with want and only want _home now with you so good more please Padmé Anakin love you love you love you._

He draws her boots off with the Force as his wandering hands reach the waistband of her pants, and when they too are gone she wraps her legs around his waist and her hand around the back of his neck and tugs him down to kiss him fiercely, demandingly, urging him on; a kiss a man could get lost in, and Anakin Skywalker does, every time.

*********

Several hours, a check on the twins, a bottle of red wine and a move to the bedroom (via the living room and the couch and one _particular_ section of the wall) later, Padmé is sprawled across her husband's chest letting his heartbeat lull her to sleep. Her left hand is rubbing over that sabre-scar on his right hip, motions getting slower and sloppier as she loses focus; all her world is narrowed down to the steady _thu-thump_ under her cheek and the touch of his hand on her lower back.

"Tell me what's wrong," he says at last.

Padmé considers it for a moment in that abstract, detached way that thinking works when she isn't just half asleep but thoroughly exhausted with it.

"No," she says at last. "Not tonight." Kisses his chest gently. "It doesn't belong in our bed."

Anakin sighs, but he doesn't argue.

*********

It's finally the end of the day, another glorious sunset flooding the Jedi Council Chambers with red-gold light. Orders of business have been many and varied, from investigations on former Separatist strongholds to the increasingly acute and noticeable problem that there are more Younglings at the Temple than Knights capable of training them.

But the one thing they have not addressed are the Senate investigations, and more specifically, the roles of Kenobi and Skywalker in those investigations and what is to be done about them.

Some of the Council members are already beginning to wonder if it ever will be addressed. Yoda seems determined to either ignore the question or deal with it on his own terms, and it is hard to tell, more than one Master privately believes, which option would be worse. Ignoring it would make them arrogant, detached from reality, believing themselves above the jurisdiction of the Senate they claim to serve.

But those who know Kenobi and Skywalker relatively well (that is, as well as anyone knows them who isn't Kenobi or Skywalker) are fairly certain that if Yoda does attempt to interfere in this, especially without the backing of the Council, Skywalker will be furious and Kenobi... well, no one seems to be sure what Kenobi is thinking these days. Maybe not even Kenobi himself. At the moment, only his loyalty to Skywalker remains beyond question.

"Then I believe our business is concluded," Mace Windu is saying when the doors slide back. Everyone looks up, surprised: they'd felt the Jedi approaching, but for someone to barge into the chambers during Council is unheard of.

Of course, the man doing the barging in has done a number of unheard-of things in the last year alone.

"Anakin Skywalker," Mace Windu says sharply. "What are you –"

"How dare you?" Anakin whispers, addressing Yoda. There's a fury in his face that few on the Council have ever seen in another living being, and even worse, a terrible calm.

Yoda's eyes widen. "Question me, you do?"

"I should think that's become extremely obvious," Skywalker bites out. "Your pet kidnapper already had our answer. What made you think visiting my wife in person would change that?"

There's a shocked silence.

"Attempt to explain to her the dangers you place the children in, I did," Yoda says quietly.

Skywalker barks a laugh. "Dangers, huh. _Dangers_. I'm guessing you didn't mean the dangers of _Sith Lords_, Master Yoda. Or the dangers you tend to find on the _battlefields_ of a _galactic war_. Or, f'example, slavers. I'm guessing you were mostly talking about the dangers of open power sockets and falling down the stairs, because Force knows you and your precious Order are completely incapable of protecting any children against those other things!"

He started out quietly and got louder and louder, every word a punch to the gut. Yoda does not flinch.

"Clouded your judgment still is," he states.

"No," Skywalker says, and he's gone quiet again, soft, almost gentle. "No, not _my_ judgment, Master. Tell me, why didn't you just come to our apartment? You know where it is. Half the galaxy knows where Anakin Skywalker's living these days. But no, you went to the medcentre, you spoke with her boss first – why? Because Force knows I have a theory, and it starts with Jedi mind tricks and ends with you taking my children without my wife's consent and before I can do a thing about it."

Not a punch. A slap: a sharp stinging slap, not truly meant to hurt but to humiliate instead, to make a vicious point, but it leaves everyone breathless just the same, and not even Yoda can answer that charge. It's too preposterous, too outrageous, too unthinkable.

And suddenly the traitorous little thought occurs: too close to the truth.

There's a sharp-edged triumph on Skywalker's face now. "You don't even know, do you?" he says. "You're too busy clinging on to the past with both hands to even realise what your motivations are in the present. Well, here's a suggestion for you, ladies and gentlebeings –" speaking to them all now, turning from Yoda with a swift movement like that of a great cat to command the attention of everyone in the room. "_Stay away from my family_. For _good_. Because if you threaten them again – and yes, it was a threat, don't for a minute delude yourselves otherwise – well. We all know what happened to Lord Sidious, don't we?"

He smiles then, actually smiles, cheerful and pleasant, and leaves.

It's like a grip around the collective throat of the Council has suddenly eased, a spell put on them broken, such were the implications of his words. Such is the sheer power the man carries with him. Power in the Force, mainly, surrounding him to the point of being palpable to a naked Force-blind eye, but other powers too: charisma, presence.

Anakin Skywalker has come into his own.

As soon as he leaves the room, there's uproar.

*********

The apartment always seems strangely quiet when Anakin isn't home, even when the twins are here. There's something about him that fills up a room, drawing your attention without even trying, and when he's gone it's like there's a hole in the world itself.

Padmé hates feeling like that. It makes her feel like a character in a romance novel, and the amused look on Obi-Wan's face isn't helping.

"He hasn't been gone that long," he says, shifting Luke in his arms a little.

Padmé glares. "He's been gone once too often," she says, and then sighs. "Did he tell you where he was headed?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "Not a word. Why, are you worried?"

She shrugs.

"Tell me."

Padmé purses her lips and wanders over to sit beside him on the couch. Leia is sitting in the big armchair, leaning against one of the arms and examining a pop-up book with great seriousness. Luke is apparently fascinated by the fabric of Obi-Wan's tunic sleeve.

"Yoda came to see me," she says at last.

Obi-Wan pauses. "About the twins."

"Yes."

"I see."

"I said – several rather hurtful things."

"But he obviously didn't take the children."

"No. He was... he seemed to accept my decision."

Obi-Wan snorts. "I doubt that," he says. "He'll be back. They'll be back. The children of the Chosen One aren't just _any _Force-sensitive younglings."

Padmé's hands twist together in her lap. "Obi-Wan. If they try – if Anakin – I'm afraid of what he'd do. If they try."

Obi-Wan knows perfectly well what Anakin would do if the Order tries to take the twins. It's the one thing he still can't handle, the shatterpoint he will never be able to completely overcome: his need to protect the ones he loves.

He wasn't lying when he told the Senate he had no more fear for Anakin; but his certainty that Anakin will never give in to that roiling darkness Obi-Wan sometimes sensed in him during the war doesn't mean that said darkness will ever truly leave him.

"I'm not," he says at last, and smiles at his brother's wife. "He'd be furious, yes. But he has more control over it now than ever before – control I rather suspect you taught him, by the way. Don't underestimate him, Padmé: I know how direct he is, how much he abhors dishonesty, but he's far more cunning than I am. Whatever he's up to, it won't involve the use of a lightsabre."

Padmé laughs a little. "No, you're right. I just mean: is that really any better?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure you're not hanging on a little too tightly to the no-killing rule and ignoring the fact that non-violence doesn't necessarily mean moral?"

Obi-Wan groans. "You're worse than he is. I don't know, Padmé. Maybe I'm not sure. Maybe I'm focussing on the wrong things. Maybe I should go back to the Temple this afternoon and crawl to the Council to ask Master Windu's forgiveness. Maybe my illegal attachment to Anakin and, by extension, you and the babies, is twisting everything, blinding me to the truth – I don't know. All I can tell you is: the vaunted, prophesised Chosen One of the Jedi Order was born a slave on a world ruled by criminals and brought up by his mother to believe in loving and protecting his family before all else – values which directly contradict everything the Code teaches about attachment. The hero of the Republic is an angry young man who has a tendency to risk everything in order to do what he thinks is right, forsaking the bigger picture in favour of saving lives in the here and now. And the man who defeated the Sith and destroyed their evil is a renegade Jedi whose accomplishments make a mockery of the very Order that taught him his skills."

"He thinks the Order needs to change."

"So do I."

"You can't be the only ones," Padmé says.

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to answer her, and stops. Frowns. "No," he says suddenly. "No, we can't, can we?" He looks down at the little boy on his lap. "You know, Luke," he says, "your mother is an exceptionally intelligent woman."

"He knows that already," Padmé says and grins.

*********

When Anakin gets back that night, he's exuding an air of rather worrying self-satisfaction. Kisses Padmé with fierce exuberance and tosses Leia up in the air in greeting: she shrieks with delight and Luke starts clamouring for the same treat.

"I don't suppose you'd mind letting the rest of us know what you've been up to," Obi-Wan says suspiciously as they trade twins.

"Giving some old friends something to think about," Anakin says smugly, tossing Luke a second time.

*********

The Temple has been in uproar for the better part of three days now. Anakin Skywalker's visit – his first since leaving the Order, his wife even refused to let him be treated in their medical facilities after his duel with Sidious – has set a debate in motion which not even Yoda himself could stop: even the Padawans are whispering in the corridors and the Younglings look afraid and worried.

More than one has asked, hesitating and fearfully, about their own parents. More than one wants to know what Master Skywalker did wrong to have to leave the Order after defeating a Sith Lord.

The Council chamber itself has seen some bitter arguments. Yoda is unshakeable in his certainty and belief in the Code – at least outwardly. Master Windu has been silent for longer and looked more troubled than any of them can ever remember him being before.

It's been suspected by many for some years that many Jedi sent to investigate Force-sensitive younglings have... neglected to give the parents of said younglings the fullest picture of the situation, but it's the first time that any such parent has openly accused a Jedi of planning to mind-trick their spouse into giving up their children. And to accuse the Grand Master of the Order himself...

Increasingly, the Temple is becoming split in two. Yoda can feel it in his bones: the dissent, the arguments, the anger and the bitterness running through the very centre of the Order he has upheld for centuries.

If he were anyone but Yoda, it would perhaps make him angry, but he _is _Yoda, and there is something else in this Temple now, too. Along with the dissent and the shouting and the rebellious whispers in darkened rooms and empty corridors has come... a sense. A feeling, a ripple in the Force, gentle for now but growing every day.

Yoda sits in meditation and listens to it, perplexed, curious. It is not clarity, as he imagined it would be after the destruction of the Sith, the fulfilment of the Prophecy of the Son of Suns. It is not certainty, or pure understanding. It is... something else. Something he feels he should remember, tugging at the very edges of his awareness. Something that burns and beckons, bright and vital.

_Change_, he thinks. _Change, I sense. Change, and new life._

Yoda may not know anger, but he still remembers fear.

*********

Obi-Wan makes his proposal to Anakin and Padmé a week after Anakin's visit to the Temple, and frankly the notion floors them both.

"You're joking," Anakin says. "Tell me you're joking."

Obi-Wan shakes his head. "I'm not joking," he says. "But you're not going far enough, which is ironic in a boy who's spent the better part of his life leaning on every boundary he's ever come across."

"What you're proposing is a schism in the Jedi Order," Padmé says quietly.

Obi-Wan nods. "A new Temple. A new Order. A new Code, for Force's sake. Can you honestly tell me you would have been capable of defeating Sidious if you'd always followed the one we've got?" this to Anakin, with a touch of anger.

Anakin shrugs helplessly. "I just. I did what I had to –"

"You did what you had to do to help me, and to protect your family," Obi-Wan says quietly. "That's not a part of the Code as we know it. Neither was my going against the Council to ask for the help of a renegade outcast in the first place."

Anakin wants to wince at that description of himself, but it's true – from their point of view.

"Still," he says, "where would we go?"

Obi-Wan shrugs. "Wherever we can," he says. "I'm not pretending to have all the details worked out yet. But we have friends, you and I: Sabé, Bail Organa..."

"True."

"Anakin," Padmé says gently. "You said it yourself. The Order needs to change."

He glares at her. "I have other commitments, remember?"

"You have a commitment to yourself," Padmé says irritably. "I won't put up with you if you're going to spend the rest of your life moping, you know. I don't want you to settle because you think it's your duty to us. I'm a doctor; I can find work anywhere."

"Well, I don't want you to have to give up what you love because you think it's your duty to me!"

Obi-Wan is tempted to laugh, but wisely refrains.

"You want to do this," Padmé says softly. "You need to do this. Don't tell me you don't, it would be a lie. I know you better than that. You can't start something the way you started this mess at the Temple when you went there last week and then walk away from it, my love. This is right, Anakin. This is right for you. And for the twins. They're Force-sensitive, for crying out loud. They shouldn't ever have to face the same choice that you did. Hells, no parent in the galaxy should have to face your mother's choice – our choice. Can you honestly say we wouldn't have given them to the Temple if you hadn't been a Jedi? We wouldn't have known how to help them, how to be sure what was best for them."

Anakin groans. "If I hadn't been a Jedi we would never have met," he says, but that's completely beside the point and they all know it.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan says quietly. "I need your help, my brother. If this is to happen, I need your help. What do I know of love? The Code as it is is the only way I know how to be a Jedi. How am I supposed to teach a way of life I'm only beginning to understand and accept for myself? Hells," he laughs sharply, "it's taken me fourteen years to get to the point where I can openly tell you how much you mean to me. And I practically raised you."

Anakin meets his eyes across the kitchen table. Padmé is smiling a little.

"Others are going to need your example, Anakin. Just as much as I do."

Finally, Anakin sighs. "I think," he says softly, "we should be talking to a couple of other people in the Temple about this. Nejaa Halcyon, for example."

Obi-Wan frowns. "He took you to Praesitlyn." He sounds as disapproving as if Nejaa Halcyon were an old family friend who took his little brother to an amusement park for a day instead of making him study for his exams.

"I attended his son's wedding on Corellia two years ago," Anakin says in that bland but pointed way he has.

Obi-Wan stares at him for a heartbeat, and then he grins, delighted. "_Perfect_," he says.

Padmé glances from his wide grin to Anakin's smirk and starts to feel a twitch of trepidation.

Oh well, with any luck she can get them to move their base of operations to Naboo, and that will keep her mother happy, at least. And the twins would love Varykino.

Maybe she should call Sabé and see what she thinks.

"Also, I expect to be an equal partner in this venture," Anakin adds. "I know what you're like about taking charge of things and expecting me to fall in line like an adolescent."

"Hmm. Well, that was a long time ago."

"And don't you forget it."

Obi-Wan smiles. "I won't."


End file.
